Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

In my small home town of Launceston in northern Tasmania, we've broken yet another temperature record this summer, we had the driest December ever recorded, and yesterday it was reported in the media that an estimated 60,000 Atlantic salmon—finfish, an invasive species that is farmed in the Tamar River—died. There was a mass fish mortality, because the water has warmed to such an extent that the nitrogen levels underneath those fish pens have starved those fish of oxygen. Those fish literally choked and drowned in their own shit in those pens. That's a problem for the salmon company, but it's not just the Tamar River. We've seen hundreds and thousands of fish die in single events in Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast of Tasmania. If you think that's a lot—Senator Duniam knows this—one of the companies, Tassal, lost over a million fish in a single event in the shallow waters of the Huon Valley. Why? Because our oceans are warming. Why am I raising this now? For two simple reasons. Two of the Senate inquiries that haven't been responded to, dating back to seven years ago, firmly warming oceans and the problems with finfish aquiculture in Tasmania on the national and federal political agenda. That's not to mention the amazing work the environment and comms committee did back in 2016 into the impacts of warming oceans.

Who in here doesn't think we've seen an unprecedented period of history where marine habitats have changed because of warming oceans? I honestly couldn't think of a more important issue in the environment than this. I'm a bit biased, because I spend a lot of time in the ocean and I care deeply about our marine ecosystems, but this is an issue that this chamber and this government have ignored. They have refused to respond to these inquiries.

The 2015 finfish inquiry—and I thank Labor for their support; it was fellow Tasmanian Lisa Singh who convinced her colleagues in this place to support that inquiry—began because some secret documents were put under the Greens door in Hobart. There were leaked emails from two of the CEOs of the three salmon companies begging the state government to do their job and regulate the salmon industry. They said, 'It is a ticking time bomb if you don't act.' Companies begging for regulation—you don't see that very often.

This was a significant matter of national interest because Macquarie Harbour—where we did have a ticking time bomb; it's been an unmitigated disaster since 2015—has protected federal species and is on the on the edge of a World Heritage area. Eventually, we convinced the federal environment department, because of those threatened species, to go down there and talk to the environmental protection agency. Finally, we saw some action on destocking salmon in those harbours. The regulation of finfish and salmon aquiculture is a federal issue. Yet, this government has refused to take its seriously and now they are reaping the consequences of that, as is the Tasmanian community.

Another report that this government has sat on for six years is the report on the mitigation of shark bites in this country. It was one of the biggest Senate inquiries I've been involved in, and I'm very proud the Greens led on this one as well. We went all around the country and took evidence from small towns like Ballina in New South Wales, through to Sydney, Perth and northern Queensland. We listened to all the evidence and we pulled together the world's first inquiry into mitigating the risk of shark bites and how we can get the balance to protect our ecosystems. Sharks are critical to ocean health, yet we have these fisheries devices, like shark nets and drumlines, that are indiscriminately killing not just sharks; they are weapons of mass destruction for protected marine life, like turtles and rays and whales. That was a great body of work, but this government has never responded. There are a number of recommendations in that inquiry about, once again, how the federal government could show leadership on this issue. It is way past time for the federal government to show national leadership on this debate. We still see the media victimising sharks. We still see state governments, like those of New South Wales and Queensland, refusing to remove these last-century responses to what is a very complex problem that has much better solutions. And they're all in that report—if the federal government would just listen and pay attention.

By the way, when we were holding this inquiry on great white sharks, which are a nationally protected species, there was a big push on to open up great white sharks to fishing, all around this country. We saw Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister at the time, calling great white sharks the terrorists of the sea. I remember when Mr Frydenberg flew over to Western Australia and whipped the media into a frenzy to kill great white sharks. CSIRO did a report looking at the genetics of white shark populations and found that, contrary to the myths that this government was whipping up, shark populations aren't exploding in this country. In fact, they're not exploding; they're flatlining, at best, if not continuing to decline.

We're still catching these protected species in shark nets. We're still catching whales. Senator Waters, who's from Queensland, knows that, every year, on the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, whales are getting entangled in these awful shark nets that are just designed to kill marine life for a false sense of security. We've recently had the tragic death of a surfer at Snapper Rocks and Greenmount, on the Gold Coast, bitten by a shark, inside a shark net. He probably had a false sense of security, like many surfers and ocean-goers do—that somehow you're safe if the shark nets are there. Well, you're not. Shark nets do not make you safe from shark bites. They are simply a fisheries device designed to reduce the population of sharks and other marine life. They're totally indiscriminate killers.

We could do so much better if we had federal leadership. I'm proud that the Greens have led on this issue, as they have with warming oceans, through this Senate committee, and as they have with trying to get some action on regulating toxic Atlantic salmon in the waterways of my home state of Tasmania. The Greens will continue to lead on these issues. Senator Duniam, I hope that you provide a response to this today and that we see some action from your government on this issue; I recognise that we are looking at Commonwealth waters and other ways of farming finfish, and you can be sure that I'm keeping a very close eye on that.

I want to finish by saying what Senator Hanson-Young has said so eloquently already: the fact that we have 18 reports from a committee on the environment that haven't been responded to—many of them on critical issues like those I've outlined today—shows this government's contempt for the environment; it shows how low a priority it is on their agenda. There's been critical work done by good people, including the amazing people who work in the Senate committee—the secretariat and all the fantastic people—as well as all the witnesses around the country. There were hundreds of witnesses in the shark inquiry, and there were even more submissions. Yet we've done nothing. We've failed to respond and we've failed to show leadership on an issue that is a significant matter of public interest. This idea of shark bites, whether our oceans are safe and how we can better protect our marine environment is still one of the issues most talked about by Australians at their barbecues in summer. Let's get some responses before this parliament is finished, so that we can give them to the people who went out of their way to make submissions and inform the evidence that we need for good policy and good decisions. (Time expired)